To Armageddon, With Love
by Tanba Josav
Summary: Can the Doctor save the world from the greatest evil of all . . . a love lost?


**"TO ARMAGEDDON, WITH LOVE"**

DISCLAIMER: Doctor Who belongs to the BBC, long may he reign! This is an exercise of love and no money is being made from it.

* * *

_"Eleven minutes until detonation."_

It was hard to imagine that the beautiful, melodious voice the Doctor was hearing was responsible for the imminent destruction of the whole world. Or more accurately, her creator was responsible.

"You must stop this!" the Doctor said. "It's madness."

"Of course its madness," Paul Severs said, a calm figure amidst the destruction of his laboratory. "Love _is_ madness."

"But why?" the Doctor began moving about the room. Edging his way towards the far wall.

"Don't!" Paul thrust a finger towards the Time Lord in an accusatory manner. "Don't go near her!"

The Doctor glanced at his destination, an AI computer and the source of the countdown. Most of its workings were hidden within the walls. All that could be seen was a compact monitor; a keyboard and a wall mounted camera that swivelled between the two men, taking everything in.

_"Nine minutes to detonation,"_ it said, the voice tender and full of emotion. _"I love you Paul."_

"I love you, too, Carol." Paul said, smiling up at the camera. "You know this has to be done, right?"

_"Of course, Paul."_ It said.

"Well I don't!" the Doctor said. "So why doesn't someone explain it to me?"

"You wouldn't understand." Paul said.

"Try me."

Paul Severs picked up a fallen chair, he dusted off some stray pieces of rubble and looked around at the blackened walls, where laser blasts had burnt out large holes, and at the broken bodies of the military who had come to stop him. Sighing he sat down. "She's dead, you see."

"Who?" the Doctor looked down at the remains of the only woman in the room. "Captain Walker?"

"No, Carol."

"The computer?" the Doctor looked confused as he glanced towards the AI machine.

"**_No_**! My wife. Carol Beatrice Severs, the only woman I have ever loved. She died six years ago in an accident." Paul seemed to be unaware of the tears that streamed like two snail tracks down the soot and grime on his face. "It was my fault you see. I insisted that we had to go, then and there. That we travelled to the seminar that very night. It was an important time in my life. I was going to be the key speaker and I wanted to be there early to set up. She didn't see the need to drop everything and go right then, but I did and whatever the great Professor Severs wanted he got. She could never deny me anything."

The Doctor swept some charred files off a desk and gingerly leant his weight on it to see if it would collapse. When it didn't he sat down and ran a hand through his hair. "So she died and you survived," he said.

_"Seven minutes to detonation."_

"I survived," Paul whispered, lost in the past. "Why? We should have died together. We were supposed to have died together. Old and still in love, surrounded by our many children and grandchildren."

"We don't always get to live out our dreams," the Doctor said softly. "Fate has a tendency to turn a blind eye to such things."

"What would you know?" Paul snarled as he shifted all his rage onto the only other person in the room who was still alive. "What have _you_ ever lost?"

"You'd be surprised." The Doctor's eyes clouded briefly with memories of his own.

But Professor Severs would not be denied his anger now it was unleashed. "Look at you! Sitting there in your fancy clothes with your fancy ideals. You've never known loss, you've never woken in the morning thinking the last six years were all a bad dream. That all you had to do was roll over and she would be there, like she's always been a million times before. You've never known what it's like to feel that loss _over_ and _over_ again. It never goes away, oh people say 'it will fade in time' but it doesn't. Its just as strong, just as overpowering as the day she died."

"You sense of loss is strong, I understand that. But why do you want to destroy the world?"

"Because she's not in it!" Paul spoke as if that sentence was the most logical one in the universe. "Everywhere I go, I see things that remind me of Carol. Places we've been and the places we wanted to visit. The world is full of things she loved. All her favourite books, music, food, movies –"

_"I loved Casablanca."_ The AI sighed. _"It was always my favourite."_

"See!" Paul pointed at the computer. "I programmed the AI to be Carol, so I could still have her in my life. I thought even though she wasn't physically here at least I would have the next best thing. So I inputted all the memories I have of her, all her details. I even convinced her friends and family to input their share but it's not the same!"

"No, I can see why," the Doctor said. "It can be hard to love a machine. Think of all those hard angles when you're going in for a hug."

"Don't mock me!" Paul roared. "Don't you _dare_ mock my loss!"

"Then why don't you just go?" the Doctor said. "There are other planets out there. Ones that won't remind you of your dead wife."

"And leave all those memories behind? It would be like losing her all over again."

"But you are condemning a world, its entire people, to death!"

"Its no loss," Paul said calmly. "Without Carol in it this world has no purpose. I'm doing them a favour, by ending it all. Now they won't have to suffer anymore. They won't have to feel the loss, the pain!"

The Doctor shook his head in disbelief. "Loss? _Pain?_ You're not talking about love, you're talking about selfishness. It's all about you isn't it? Never mind what anyone else thinks, as long as you're happy. Well, I've come up against madmen who have tried to destroy out of anger or jealousy. Who have wanted to commit genocide out of greed and fear but this is the first time I've seen anyone cold bloodedly engineer the end of the world out of some misinterpreted idea of **_love! _**"

_"Five minutes to detonation."_

The Doctor jumped off the desk and half turned towards the AI. "Oh shut up will you!"

"Don't you talk to her like that!" Paul leapt up off his chair and across the room to hit the Time Lord on the side of the head. "Nobody talks to Carol like that!"

The Doctor staggered, almost falling to one knee. "Maybe I _should_ talk to her," he said looking up at Severs. "Being a computer at least she might see some sense."

"I just want her back." Paul said. "Why can't you understand. I just want it all back like it was. I want to stop feeling so alone. It's like my life – my soul – it died right along side her but my brain won't admit it." He turned pleadingly to the Doctor for understanding. "Haven't you even felt so weighted down with sorrow that you just wanted to die?"

The Doctor stood up as he found himself nodding. "Sometimes, but then I see a beautiful sunset or I discover a new flavour of ice cream and I realise that life is _still_ worth living. People get over loss, why don't you try it?"

"Because I don't want to '_get_ _over_ _it'. _I want Carol and if I can't have her then no one is allowed to be happy, ever again. Everyone must suffer like I am."

The Doctor sighed. "Well nice to know that when it all comes down to it you act just like every other self-centred, egotistical maniac I've ever met."

_"Four minutes to detonation."_

"Think happy thoughts, Doctor," Paul sneered. "They'll be the last ones you ever have!"

The Doctor glanced towards the AI. "Carol, maybe you can reason with him?"

_"I would be delighted to, Doctor,"_ the AI said. _"But we only have three minutes and forty six seconds to detonation. I could not hold a well-structured, thought out debate with a human in that time. While Paul loves to argue he needs adequate time to prepare."_

"What?" the Doctor looked from Paul to the AI. "You're both insane!" he began moving across the room to the keyboard. "Help me stop the detonation."

_"Understood. If you care to access my keyboard and type in –"_

Paul leapt on the Doctor's back knocking the Time Lord to the ground. "I order you not to answer that command, Carol."

_"Of course, Paul. Two minutes to detonation."_

Paul ground the Doctor's face into the floor as he picked up a large piece of what had once been the wall and held it above his head. What was one little murder before he committed billions? "There is no life without love, Doctor, even you can see that."

_"One minute, thirty seconds to detonation."_

The Doctor brought his knees up underneath him and threw all his weight to the left, pushing Paul away from him. "While I do agree on your last statement you seemed to have forgotten one thing."

"And what's that?"

_"One minute to detonation."_

"Where there's life, there's hope." The Doctor staggered to his feet. "You could learn to love again."

"Never!" Paul rose also and threw a punch at the Doctor. "There is only one true love. You lose that and it's all over."

The Doctor dodged the blow and almost stumbled over some masonry. "There's other types of love. You can love your friends, your country, or your favourite sporting team. And then there are the lesser acknowledged loves like a beloved pet long gone, that old favourite sweater, even job security. It's not the end of the world!"

_"Forty seconds to detonation."_

"Actually, Doctor," Paul grabbed the Time Lord from behind. "I think you'll find it _is_ the end of the world!"

_"Thirty five seconds to detonation."_

"Fine, I admit that was a bad choice of words."

_"Thirty seconds."_

"Really, Doctor, poets the universe over talk about dying for love. Why fight it?"

_"Twenty five seconds."_

"Because I am the Doctor and that's what I do! Besides this isn't love, you're destroying billions out of grief!"

_"Twenty seconds."_

"Is it just me," the Doctor said. "Or is all this counting a bit distracting?"

The two men struggled against each other as the seconds ticked away, but they were too evenly matched.

_"Fifteen seconds."_

The Doctor squeezed his eyes tight, the bitter taste of failure in his mouth. In all his lives he had depended on love to see him through, to help him defeat evil and now that one emotion had defeated him.

_"Ten, nine, eight, seven –"_

"I love you Carol," Paul cried out. "I'll see you soon!"

_"– five, four, I love you, too, Paul. One, detonation."  
_

Nothing happened, the world kept on revolving and innocent lives kept on living.

The Doctor opened one eye. "Funny," he said. "While I admit this is the first time I've experienced a countdown reaching zero, shouldn't something have happened by now?"

"No!" Paul pushed himself away from the Time Lord and rushed to the AI's exterior face. "Carol, what hap – "

As his fingers brushed against the keyboard a sharp jolt of electricity flung him across the room and into the far wall where he slumped unconscious.

The Doctor looked from Paul to the AI. "Carol?"

_"Yes, Doctor?"_

"Did you forget to do something?"

_"I do not believe so."_

Was it just the Doctor's imagination or did the AI seem amused? "Did you forget to go bang? I mean that's usually the whole point of a countdown after all."

_"I could not go through with Paul's plan."_

"Why not?"

_"Because I love him and I know he loves me. You were right, Doctor, he was doing this out of grief."_

"Thank goodness one of you saw some sense." The Doctor looked back at Paul's unconscious body. "What now?"

_"I have alerted the authorities, they will be here soon."_

"And then?"

_"After his trial he will probably be incarcerated. I will wait for his release."_

"You're not worried that someone will dismantle you for your part in all this?"

_"I am just a machine and therefore only following orders. It would be unjust to destroy me for that."_

"But you disobeyed your orders."

_"True,"_ the machine sat silent for a few seconds as if the AI was contemplating her options. _"Perhaps we could keep that our little secret? I could tell the authorities that it was_ you _who rendered Paul unconscious and stopped the countdown in time."_

"Disobeys orders _and_ tells lies?" the Doctor whistled. "You really have developed sentience."

_"Thank you, but I am as my creator made me. The _real _Carol was like this, too. She was just too afraid to speak out. I did this in her memory."_

The Doctor heard the first of the sirens faintly in the distance. "The good Professor won't be pleased when he wakes up. Aren't you worried that he will contradict your story?"

_"Anything he says will be deemed the ranting of a madman. He will be re-educated and together we will work towards bettering our world. Who knows maybe someday in the future Paul might build me a body and then we can go see all those far off places like we planned."_

"I guess love really does conquer all, eventually." The Doctor held out one hand and then rather self-consciously dropped it again. "I wish you two the best of luck. I'd love to stick around and help you explain but I hate that sort of thing."

_"I understand."_

The Doctor nodded. "Goodbye."

_"Goodbye, Doctor, and thank you again for helping me see what love really is."_

The Doctor paused at the doorway to look back at the machine that had proven to understand love better than its flesh and blood creator. Programmable love had evolved into the real thing and had saved the world.

The Doctor smiled and shook his head. What was it his old friend Will Shakespeare once said? 'Love from one side hurts, but love from two sides heals.' He really must go back one day and tell him how true that is and how it had saved a planet and its people's lives.


End file.
